(03-06-2018 12:50 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  But here's the thing. It's the reason why we are getting our asses kicked on trade deals. Everybody else gets to charge a "tariff" on imports without having to call it a tariff, and they get to subsidize exports without having to call it a subsidy, all perfectly in accord with well-established international law. If we try to retaliate with tariffs, we are going to find 1) some of them are not going to be permitted under international law, and 2) to the extent that they are permitted, they are going to be met with retaliatory tariffs coming back at us that will do more harm than we can do good.

Owl, Half the country or more doesn't understand the relationship between imports/exports and their jobs/income. They think China dumping steel (or whomever) and thus making it cheap is a good thing for us.

I agree 100% that this is the right solution, and I agree 100% that it needs to be done. I also note that 'Republicans' have been increasingly pushing it since Perot or even earlier, with almost every one of the 57 (joking) candidates who recently ran for the post presenting some version of it, which allowed people to make distinctions in the differences, but made it harder for them to argue that it was a bad idea in general... but despite the global popularity of it, I've never seen one democrat on any level in any election run on the idea. Luxury tax and sales tax with exemptions for basics is the closest I've ever seen, which is why I once embraced the idea of a national sales tax. If it's not regressive for the state/county, then why is it regressive at the Federal level. The VAT and prefund is of course cleaner, but we're 30 years into it and still haven't seen a serious proposal for such a plan. The current political environment is class and race warfare.... and this is a monstrous target for those claims